After months of fighting it, you finally joined the “video marketing revolution” and developed an integrated social media campaign complete with a video marketing strategy. Congratulations for bravely implementing yet another social media trend! As a result, you are seeing some great ROI. The bad news is, according to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s video metrics were incorrect. “The […]

Without a PR firm to develop and implement a social media strategy, business owners are prone to make a few mistakes. Today, social media continues to be one of the most effective marketing tools. But used the wrong way, social media networking sites can have a negative impact on your business and could cause the company to lose its customer base. The following infographic from Bianchi Public Relations “Top Five Social Media Mistakes of Professional Service Firms” illustrates the potential damage.

The good news, according to the SMB Group, is that the overall use of social media is up from 44 to 53 percent among small businesses (1-99 employees) and up from 52 to 63 percent among medium businesses (100-999 employees). The bad news, however, is that many businesses continue to take a haphazard approach to social media marketing.

“The needle for SMBs [Small and Medium Businesses] using social media as part of a planned, corporate strategy has barely moved at all,” said SMB Group Founder and Partner Sanjeev Aggarwal. “More SMBs are using social media, but they lack the solutions, expertise and guidance to integrate them with other business processes and use them more effectively in their businesses.”

In the 2012 Small and Medium Social Business Study, the SMB Group found that small and medium businesses that use social media strategically are more satisfied with the results than ad hoc users, who are more skeptical about the value of social media. The study also shows that businesses that use social media as part of a planned corporate approach are two times more likely to anticipate revenue growth than ad hoc users.

Source: The SMB Group

Developed in partnership with CRM Essentials, the 2012 Small and Medium Social Business Study assesses how and why small and medium businesses (SMB) are using social media in their businesses today. The study also provides trending analysis based on comparison with SMB Group’s 2011 Small and Medium Social Business Study.

This year is expected to be a golden one for social media marketing. After all, 2012 became the year of discovery for most businesses. According to Creotivo’s Infographic 100 Social Networking Statistics & Facts for 2012, 62 percent of marketers said that social media became one of the most important aspects to their marketing campaigns within the last six months.

And one of the most important lessons learned for many marketers in 2012 was that delivering online content can be the most cost-effective and time-effective part of the marketing mix. Over 70 percent of marketers saw an increase in web traffic after investing just six hours per week on social media.

Also in 2012, social media marketing for businesses became a necessity, not an option. Creotivo found 34 percent of medium and 27 percent of small businesses used social media to market their products and services last year.

On Monday mornings, we are all guilty — unless you are considered ‘The Fortress’— of chatting it up about the weekend with our coffee buddies. But before next week rolls around, consider the latest infographic from TrackVia. According to the latest employee survey, 14 percent of workers said talking with co-workers is the number one reason for productivity issues at work. Number two on the list includes computer glitches and meetings (both at 11 percent).

Number three on the list may include, ‘The workplace whiner’ or ‘The One-Upper’ in the office.Six percent of the 300 employees surveyed said ‘addressing misunderstandings with co-workers’ is one of the biggest waste of time on the job. The survey, conducted by Amplitude Research for TrackVia, also found that only 5 percent of workers believe that employees waste time surfing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

“In an economy this size and one that is increasingly focused on information and services, it is nearly impossible to measure the financial impact of any workplace distraction, whether it is managing fantasy football teams, filling out March Madness brackets, shopping online for Christmas gifts, or taking 10-minute smoking breaks every couple of hours. The same widespread access to the Internet from our desks, phones and laptops that allows people to manage their fantasy teams from any place at any time, also allows work to be completed outside of traditional 9-to-5 work hours,” Challenger told the International Business Times.

“Across industries, companies are using the vast amounts of user-generated data to guide innovation of new products and services. But data mining does not equate to developing “customer intelligence.” Human behavior is nuanced and complex, and no matter how robust it is, data can provide only part of the story. Desire and motivation are influenced by psychological, social, and cultural factors that require context and conversation in order to decode.”